Bob Garry
Tulane University School of Medicine virologists Robert Garry (left) and Dr. James Robinson are part of a team of collaborators who've been researching Lassa fever in West Africa for more than 14 years. (Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano)
Robert Garry: Unfortunately -- and I hate to harp on this -- but back in June — and you can look up what I was saying in June (their link) -- I was one of the few people saying this outbreak could take a spin for the worst and turn out of control. Unfortunately, the international response has been way too slow. And so those predictions unfortunately have come true.
They're miraculous clairvoyants the Zoonati - you have to give em that much.
All the Prox O-5 authors are intriguing crazy characters. Garry went under the radar somewhat in the beginning compared to Andersen, Holmes, Lipkin who were the designated media team.
So that leaves Bob Garry, Andrew Rambaut.
Research/writer-wise, they're all gifts from God that never stop giving. Lipkin was the obvious one, CCP COI's up the kazoo, then Honorary Eddie Holmes, since he's an Aussie (the real Dark Continent) - then Andersen - Scripps's finest - waging his (lost) battle against Drastic on Twitter ... but when you finally arrive at Garry you get to a foundational US DoD dude. Who Andersen openly admires. They're great friends.
(When you finally, finally arrive at Rambo - he's a different kettle of fish altogether - younger - suave - Andersen's generation - avoids the limelight - a population engineer whiz on the computer- Farrar's Oxford-Edinburgh clique's hotshot)
Whereas Lipkin, Andersen, Holmes cut-the-part as THE science experts on TV, Bob Garry looks like an arms dealer dressed up in a lab-coat.
A book for each of the authors is in the works. As is finishing the porch. Meantime we're visiting an Ebola snippet of Bob's colorful scio-security life:
A month after the July 23 FB post by the Health & Sanitation Ministry ordering Tulane to stop Ebola testing, Garry and Andersen appear to have lost their NIH funding.
Aug, 2014: According to Constantine Nana (p25), the government of the United States decided not to renew this funding (to the Consortium) in August 2014, during the Ebola crisis, without stating the motivation for the decision. (my bold)
No evidence is evidence. If you’re so keen to study Ebola to fight the bioterrorists, why cut off funding to the main organization on-the-ground researching it in the middle of an outbreak? Wouldn't that be deserting Sierra Leone, the country that was good enough to host your bio-weapons defense lab, in its moment of need?
Again, the implication is that something went wrong, NIH got nervous, pulled the plug. This appears to have caused a scramble for funds by Garry:
Garry, Aug 29: I would be going back (to Kenema) except that there are things that are needed that I can't do over there like be in communication with people who are funding the work and trying to get more funding. .. I would love to be over there with my colleagues and staff (6 of whom died), but it's much more difficult to communicate with the NIH and many of the other entities that we need to deal with to keep the program going and to rebuild it. I'm the project leader and so I have to get the money, is the way that works.
Despite the setback of NIH money being withdrawn, the Consortium has managed to continue as an organization until this day, describing itself as a partnership of academic and industry scientists. The partners listed on VHFC website are: Kenema Govt Hospital, Tulane, Scripps, La Jolla Institute, Harvard, University of Texas, Center for Viral Systems Biology, ACE GID, Zalgen Labs (Garry's company) and Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Immunotherapeutic Consortium.
They're all interesting, and put them together you've got a decent independent funding base, but the last one, VHFIC (different from VHFC), lists its funders as Burroughs Wellcome (a US branch of Wellcome), CDC and NIH. So although NIH may have pulled the plug on direct funding for VHFC, they were still receiving money through this backdoor. The fact Wellcome is in there as well is no surprise - it shows a long-standing relationship between Farrar (Wellcome Director) and the Garry and Andersen.
A page on the VHFIC website lists the groups collaborators - they include Garry and Andersen, but also the controversial GoF scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka.
Science: In 2011, Fouchier and Kawaoka alarmed the world by revealing they had separately modified the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus so that it spread between ferrets.
Then there's ACE GID, a Nigeria-based organization supported by the World Bank.
ACE GID (Academy Center of Excellence Genomics of Infectious Diseases) website: ACEGID’s international partners include Harvard University, Tulane University, the University of Cambridge, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.S. Department of Defence.
ACE GID LinkedIn: Established in 2013 and supported by the World Bank and the US National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) H3Africa consortium (Wellcome Trust/NIH), the ACEGID platform is building genomics pipelines.
That's interesting. H3Africa, a controversial Wellcome/NIH collaboration to collect genomic data from African populations, was criticized for its helicopter approach and the misuse of subjects' personal genomic data.
So although Garry/Andersen's Consortium may have been stripped of direct NIH funding in Aug 2014, several of it's umbrella groups, are funded by the US Government, including the Dept of Defense and NIH - as well as Wellcome Trust.
Stop Press:
Tulane News, 2017: The National Institutes of Health has awarded Tulane University more than $12 million to test a promising drug treatment against Lassa fever and develop a vaccine against the deadly disease endemic in parts of West Africa.
The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Fauci) awarded virologist Robert Garry two, five-year grants for the preclinical research — $5.72 million to evaluate a potent Lassa fever antibody drug cocktail and $6.32 million (money cocktail) to design a vaccine based on a recently discovered key antibody target (Tulane's link) on the surface of the virus.
Sorry, this is how bungling my research is - would have led with that if i'd seen it earlier. Garry/Andersen were cut off officially in Aug 2014 under a cloud of an Ebola lab-exit event, then back-channeled through affiliate Consorters, then openly funded again by Fauci in 2017.
Not bad going for a guy who was in the hottest of hot-seats back in 2014:
Dr. Cyril Broderick, 2014: Disturbingly .. the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Bob & Kristian's outfit. Not the epicentre - but near the enough.
The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic.
African countries and people should .. seek damages from these countries, some corporations, and the United Nations. Evidence seems abundant against Tulane University, and suits should start there.
Prof Broderick was half-right. We got the worldwide pandemic - but no law suits - that hasn’t happened - not yet - not so much as a proper investigation - for Ebola - or Covid.
In fact the opposite happened - same way it did after Antrhax - same way it always does - a funding explosion.
NIH grants since Covid:
Robert Garry: $ 54.64 million):
Andersen: $ 23,233,450
Scripps: over $ 6 Billion (Consortium partner, home of Andersen)
(credit Arun on Twitter)